Sightings

Editor’s Note: This month we are celebrating both the twentieth anniversary of the Martin Marty Center and the ninetieth birthday of Martin Marty. Marty would say that our focus ought to be on the Center, not on him, and for the most part it is.

Editor’s Note: This month we are celebrating both the twentieth anniversary of the Martin Marty Center and the ninetieth birthday of Martin Marty. Marty would say that our focus ought to be on the Center, not on him, and for the most part it is.

Between or after sessions at Vatican II, a circle of us “guests” were conversing with—which meant “listening to”—the Pope. (How’s that for name-dropping on a wintry day?) In one exchange, as my late colleague Robert M.

In the time that’s elapsed since Sightings published my essay “Redefining the American Civil Religion” (October 6, 2017), it seems that positions of those on both ends of the political spectrum have hardened, while those in the center have become even more dismayed.

Many people were surprised when Donald Trump became U.S. president, considering him a long-shot candidate with a message more suited to the past than the present. But despite, and in some ways because of, social change, intensely religious Americans embraced him.

The U.S. president’s unilateral decision in December 2017 to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel understandably precipitated a storm of protest in the world of Realpolitik, and was immediately condemned almost unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly.